Rawne1980:"Where is the flame" said my 20 year old step daughter when I turned on the electric oven.

I could see someone being confused if they have never heard of a electric stove before. I mean I have never used a electric stove yet and I am 23.

Just to clarify the above: in some places, e.g. older houses in the UK, ovens are for the majority of cases fuelled by natural gas, which for all its dangers is a lot more efficient. Generally the grill / broiler as well.

It's still pretty crazy that someone wouldn't be aware of the existence of electric ovens at that age, but if it's all they've known, and you've just introduced her to a new cooker without pointing out that it's a different type, there's plenty of scope for a forgiveable brainfart as she first notices the lack of an auto-ignite spark button, and then nowhere to manually light it after opening the door...

ANYWAY

Let's get back to what's becoming the main thread here.Lots of people arguing over high-refresh LCDs whilst clearly not having the first fucking clue how a typical computer video system works, both in the signal generation/transmission, and its display on the screen.

First up, shall we attempt an empirical demonstration? A lot of digital cameras these days offer high-framerate "slow motion" modes, typically at least up to 240fps if not further.Using your favourite video editing software, make a 60fps video (as low or high rez as you like, it's unimportant), which is a simple alternating-frame of full white and full black (obviously, don't do this if you have photosensitive convulsive epilepsy), or better yet complementary colours like green and magenta, red and cyan, blue and yellow...Set it to run full screen on yer 60Hz and 120Hz LCD monitors, and also CRTs if you have 'em. Record this display with the highest available framerate on the camera. Put THOSE videos into the editor and play them back frame-by-frame. Can you see a difference between the two? You'll likely see a sort-of tearing effect rolling down the 60Hz ones quite obviously, and depending on the camera's actual recording rate either not at all, or at higher speed / in a more limited fashion on the 120Hz ones.

Because of the nature of video image transmission - analogue or digital, VGA DVI Displayport or HDMI - and of how LCD and LED matrices are addressed, an image going between your video card's VRAM and your eyeballs IS STILL "SCANNED" in some way whilst being rendered. Yes the LCD monitor has a framebuffer, and yes the thin film transistors tied to each picture cell are able to hold their state for a few fractions of a second without flickering or needing to be actively updated, but how does the data get from card to buffer, from buffer to transistors?

A: It's scanned. Rastered. Pumped pixel by pixel, and line by line, and eventually frame by frame (after enough lines of pixels have been sent), down a serial interface between card and buffer, and down a serial-to-semiparallel interface from buffer to transistors. There is a difference that typically an LCD will render a whole line at a time because of the actual electronic organisation of the display hardware, rather than pixel-at-a-time as in a CRT, and it's got at least a one-line delay (which for XGA at 60Hz is all of about 1/50,000th of a second, or 0.02ms) between the video card starting to send data and it appearing on screen (because the buffer has to fill up that line before showing it) instead of it being near-instantaneous and completely pixel-synched......but it certainly doesn't render an entire frame all at once, with basically zero latency between frames other than the time taken for the liquid crystals to twist. The framebuffer chip doesn't have infinite bandwidth. It will in fact have just-enough bandwidth. Which for, say, a basic 60Hz, XGA resolution LCD, is about 48Mhz as a minimum, or 144MB/sec for 24-bit true colour. (Actually, if the same line is also responsible for each of the red, green and blue instead of it being split to separate chips, 144Mhz is your baseline)

For a really high end screen, like an Apple Cinemadisplay juiced up to run at 120Hz, it'd need about a 500Mhz (or, 1.5Ghz for combined RGB scanning) framebuffer and 1.5GB/sec memory transfer speed assuming it's not "super high colour". OK, that's maybe not great shakes in the wider computing picture, but in terms of a nowadays relatively cheap peripheral like a monitor, where the price of each component can be crucial, such things class as premium hardware.

Incidentally, you're pushing the limits of HDMI with high-rate rendering as well. It can just about manage 1080p at 120Hz in extended colour depth with the latest versions and specifically designed cables AFAIK, but it was originally only ever meant for 1080i at 30Hz or 720p at 60Hz... It doesn't transmit the whole image at once, but just about squeezes it into one sixtieth or one hundred-twentieth ... by sending the data pixel by pixel, line by line, at relatively very high bandwidth (for a cheap, parallel-wired cable).

Apparently the SXGA monitor on my desk can do 75Hz as well as 60Hz. I think I'll have to get hold of a slo-mo camera and see if it's actually doing it for real - changing the rate at which it updates the panel - or is just up- or down-converting somehow. I figure it's probably using the chip from a larger panel, which can handle higher rates, and always outputs at an effective 75Hz speed... but takes a rest for the equivalent of 1/5th of a frame before starting over when receiving data at 60Hz...

TL;DR version: Don't confuse a flicker-free panel for one that updates rapidly. CRT updates are necessarily 1:1 as they are unbuffered, and scan rate = update rate (apart from some very exotic things like the Commodore 1024-line monitor for the Amiga which had a buffer and received actual image data at about 15Hz down a standard-def cable). LCDs have a buffer, and don't rely on a flickery scanning electron beam in order to actually render the image, so they give a much more stable-seeming image than the CRT. This does not, however, mean that they UPDATE the image any faster, that they're able to, or even that they don't update it in a "scanning" fashion...

it may not be the stupidest thing i've heard throughout my life but my worker said yesterday " baby Tadpoles are called Guppies" now i know most people dont know alot about animals, but at least please know that Tadpoles are baby Frogs. A Guppy is a colourful fresh water fish that kinda reminds me of a none violent betta fish.

The first one that came to mind is more opinionated, I personally think it is stupid but it is technically an opinion.

Someone in my family believes that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim extremist who supports the Taliban and has a secret agenda to make the United States a completely socialist nation due to his jihadist beliefs.

I understand how some people may agree with parts of that statement, but to believe all that is pretty stupid.

his1nightmare:One man once asked me: "How long does it take to upload a video on Youtube?"Me: "This is the most stupid thing I've ever read."He: "Why?"Me: "This is the second most stupid thing I've ever read."

That seems like a fair enough question to me. Not everyone is tech savvy. Certainly the average layman probably doesn't know the ins and outs of how the Internet works.

I actually had a look at a youtube video where he makes that comment. He later said something about the Kiwi accent of the interviewer throwing him off. Funny how in Australia we get New Zealand, American, Canadian, British and Australian shows, and we somehow manage to "get" all the foreign accents. Also funny how some Americans make similar comments about foreign accents (ie, British) making it hard for them to understand people. They have a load of funny accents in their own country.

I know a girl at work who was completely serious when she said both "Nova Scotia's not in Canada is it?" and "Wait we have Oceans, which ones?" To clarify that second statement, she didn't know that we had two coastlines and what Oceans they were.

"I CAN NOT play games in anything less than 60fps, anything less, I can see individual frames otherwise"You must have a fucking awful time watching movies and tv then."I'm pretty sure the moon and the sun are the same thing"A 15 year old.

The Illuminati secretly runs the entire world, and the illusion of governments are kept to keep public trust. Everything is a conspiracy. No, everything. Chemtrails, poison in all of our food, mind-controlling fluoride in the water, all vaccines are toxic and designed to thin the population, Sandy Hook, 9/11, JFK, moon landing, etc...

Every conspiracy you've ever heard and more, this guy will fight to the death to argue.

Samantha Burt:I heard this while in a takeaway restaurant waiting for my food to be cooked:

"How big is a 10" pizza?"

I did a literal double take. Like... seriously?

In Australia, when you're ordering a pizza from say, Pizza Hut, they will list the pizza sizes in inches. Why, I don't have a clue, apparently just because you live in a country that uses the metric system apparently doesn't mean you should actually use it in product descriptions. Subway does the same thing, and it just frakkin' annoys me.

Point is, there are situations where that's actually a legitimate question.

Couple of douchebags in my kitchen management class were talking about the amount of cars they wreck and how many police cars tried chasing them. The human race will never survive after this generation. >_>

Also, "What do you mean this game is $5.25! It clearly says here it's $4.99!" We're in Texas, by the way, and this guy didn't look like a foreigner.

That seems like a reasonable question. Though I'm over in England here, maybe currency works different in Texas?

OT:Said it before, say it again... "Is Indian a religion?"

Oh, well, if I would have noticed this guy was from outside the US, I'd be fine with it. I try to be reasonable with people. (Although it's still weird; it would be almost as if he just set foot in the US and the first thing he did was run to the nearest videogame store to buy a cheap game).

Okay, there are some states here in the US that don't charge tax. Places like Oregon or Montana or Alaska don't charge sales tax. So if an item is advertized at $4.99, you only pay $4.99. The rest of the US, though charges sales tax; 8 cents or so per dollar (and by that logic, I realized the item this guy was complaining about was probably like $5.40). Of course, the cost of living is higher in those sales-tax free states.

In this region I'm at, the only neighbor states are New Mexico and... a lot of Texas. And Mexico. He had a Texan accent, though.He COULD have been from Mexico because they don't charge taxes there. But again, it's not like he just came to the US to buy a cheap game and only that.

I dunno, it was kind of a silly question to me.

I would have had the same reaction. Depending on what mood I was in I would either say "in that case I don't want the item" and leave calmly, or I would berate the person for deceiving me about the price.

PoolCleaningRobot:Some guy on this very website tried to tell me tools were not important to humans as species. And by tools I mean everything people make, like the computer he was using to argue with me.

Rastelin:Was at a party. We where talking about Holocaust. After avail some blonde girl in her early 20'ts leans over and shouts over the voices!

"Who is this Holocaust dude? He sounds like a real prick."

Is one of those moments when words seems inadequate.

Please tell me she was really drunk and just wanted attention so she decided to yell out something stupid. I don't want to believe that someone could actually be that idiotic.

OT: When I worked as a cashier I had many people say stupid things to me. The most facepalming moment was this:

I am packing her bags and setting them in the pick up area. She bought a lot of potatoes and those took up the entire pick up area all on their. Logically, I set her more fragile and squishy groceries on top of them.Her: What are you doing?!Me: Bagging your groceries....?Her: You can't set the bread on top of the potatoes! It'll be squished!Me: Wait you mean the bread will squish the potatoes?Her: No, the potatoes are going to squish the bread.Me: How.....?She did not have an answer.

YingDerpington:"What's Germany?" - Justin Bieber"I didn't know the world was round!" - Random Host on The View"What's the point of studying history they're all dead anyway" - A girl on the school bus several months ago"Who's Kurt Cobain?" - Girl on facebook who had a Nirvana shirt on in her Display Picture.

There are much worse ones but they all compound into one now.

Because breeding is really easy. Perhaps we should make GLados run logical reasoning tests on people before they are allowed.

My (immature) mate was banging on about a porn film called "Nailin' Palin",

What's so immature about quoting Jon Stewart? He didn't like the vice-presidential debate so he thought it would be more interesting if they competed in porn movie names. He called them Nailin' Palin and ridin' Biden.